1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an operation supporting device for an oscilloscope which is used for maintenance, inspection and so on of, for example, an automobile, and more particularly to an oscilloscope operation supporting device by which means an oscilloscope can be operated readily and accurately by a person who has only poor knowledge of electricity and so on.
2. Description of the Prior Art
When various signals are to be measured using an oscilloscope, it is necessary to set a plurality of relevant knobs or switches individually to predetermined positions in advance. Further, in order to produce an indication of a waveform on a screen of the oscilloscope to obtain correct information of a peak value or a frequency of the waveform, some expert knowledge of electricity is required.
Meanwhile, electronic devices such as a microcomputer has been progressively employed in recent automobile appliances. Accordingly, now an oscilloscope is a measuring instrument which is requisite for maintenance and inspection of an automobile.
In an automobile maintenance field at present, the number of operators who can freely use an oscilloscope is small. Accordingly, development of an oscilloscope operation supporting device for supporting operation of an oscilloscope is expected strongly.
In order to reduce steps of operation of an oscilloscope, a proposal has been made and is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 59-148876. The proposal disclosed involves an invention wherein deflection sensitivities of an arbitrary number of vertical input channels of an oscilloscope are all normalized automatically by a gain matching process in order to enable accurate measurement of a magnitude of a waveform.
The proposal, however, provides reduction in number of man-hours regarding only one vertical axis knob among a large number of knobs provided on an oscilloscope. Accordingly, from a point of view of a total number of man-hours for operation by an operator, such operations as an operation for adjustment of a brightness and focusing on a screen of the oscilloscope, operation of knobs for trigger, calibrating operation of a scale, probe-matching operation and some other initializing operations are still required. The proposal does not thus attain significant reduction in number of man-hours. Besides, since the means of the proposal is built in the oscilloscope, the function is available only with the oscilloscope and not with a separate oscilloscope.
Another proposal is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 54-100780. The proposal involves an invention which adopts a waveform checking system wherein information of operation of an oscilloscope or information of a standard width of a waveform is indicated on a screen in front of a Braun tube of the oscilloscope using figures, characters and so on so as to facilitate operation of the oscilloscope and permit comparison and checking of a waveform being observed.
Even with the prior art, a transition segment of a signal is too short, and a pulse waveform having a long cycle period cannot be observed appropriately.